Similar Problems, Similar Solutions: Byzantine Chrysobulls and Crusader Charters on Legal Issues Regarding the Italian Maritime Republics

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University of Groningen

Penna, Daphne

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Byzantium in Dialogue with the Mediterranean DOI:

10.30965/9789004393585_010

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Publication date: 2019

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Penna, D. (2019). Similar Problems, Similar Solutions: Byzantine Chrysobulls and Crusader Charters on Legal Issues Regarding the Italian Maritime Republics. In D. Slootjes, & M. Verhoeven (Eds.), Byzantium in Dialogue with the Mediterranean: History and Heritage (pp. 162-181). (The Medieval Mediterranean, Peoples, Economies and Cultures, 400-1500; Vol. 116). Brill. https://doi.org/10.30965/9789004393585_010

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The Medieval Mediterranean

PEOPLES, ECONOMIES AND CULTURES, 400-1500

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Byzantium in Dialogue

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Cover illustration: Abbasid Caliph al-Mamun sends an envoy to Byzantine Emperor Theophilos, Skyllitzes Matritensis, Unknown, 13th-century author, detail. With kind permission of the Biblioteca Nacional de Espafta.

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Title: Byzantium in dialogue with the Mediterranean : history and heritage / edited by Daniëlle Slootjes, Mariëtte Verhoeven.

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Figures

3.1 3.2 3.3 3-4 3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 5.7 5.8 8.1-8-4 8.6 9.1 9.2

Istanbul, Hagia Sophia, southwest vestibule, mosaic depicting Emperor Constantine presenting the city of Constantinople and Emperor Justinian presenting Hagia Sophia to the Virgin and infant Christ,

9th or 10th century 68

Representation of Constantinople, mid-14th century, parchment 69

Istanbul, Bodrum Camii (former Myrelaion church), situation in 2007,

photo 76

Istanbul, Bodrum Camii (former Myrelaion church), ca. 1915, photo 77

Istanbul, Monastery of Christ Philanthropos, reconstruction

drawing 80

lstanbul, Tekfur Sarayt, ca. 1925, photo 82

Istanbul, the sea walls between Çatladikap1 and the Maritime Gate

as in ca. 1780, engraving 83

Representation of the Hippodrome in Constantinople (Istanbul),

engraving 84

The approximate route of the ships carrying St Nicholas' relics from Myra to Bari in 1087 m

Site plan of Byzantine Bari 112 Bari, Basilica of St Nicholas, photo 113

Carpignano Salentino (Apulia), Crypt of S. Cristina, arcosolium,

St Nicholas, 1055-75, fresco 123

Sweden, Lund, Kulturhistoriska föreningen för södra Sverige, Pilgrim

badge with St Nicholas from Bari, 13th century 125

The route of St Nicholas the Pilgrim from Steiri to Trani in 1094 126

Trani, Cathedra[, photo 128

Stone relief with St Nicholas the Pilgrim, originally above the main en-trance of Barletta's walls, 13th century, Trani, Museo Diocesano_, Fragments of stained glass from the Chora Monastery (Kariye

Camii) 186

Pherai (Greece), Kosmosoteira Monastery, Representation of a

single-headed eagle, ca. 1152 192

Ptolemy gives gifts to the elders ( detail), Seraglio Octateuch, fol. 21r, Topkap1 Library (Istanbul), ca. 1150 195

133

Master of the Orcagnesque Misericordia, Head of Christ, second half

of the 14th century, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art 206

Orcagna, StrozziAltarpiece, 1354-57, Florence, Santa Maria Novella, Strozzi

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CHAPTER 7

Chrysobulls and Crusader Charters on Legal Issues

Regarding the Italian Maritime Republics

Daphne Penna

1 Byzantium, ltalians and Crusades

By the end of the 12th century, the Italian maritime cities of Venice, Pisa and Genoa had gained significant commercial and financial privileges from the

Byzantine emperors and thus played an important role in the Mediterranean

world. These privileges were included in chrysobulls, golden bulls of the em

peror in favour of the Italian cities.1 _{Apart from the commercial privileges,}

which have been studied in the past by many scholars,2 _{legal issues were also}

regulated in these chrysobulls: for example, maritime, shipwreck and salvage provisions, jurisdiction issues, forms of legal cooperation between both sides

and grants of immovable property to the ltalians.3 _{At the end of the 11th cen}

tury and throughout the 12th, the Crusader states were gradually created in

the Middle East. Charters have survived between the Italian cities and various Crusader leaders. Without doubt, the Crusader states represent a special topic, as the legal issues are extremely complicated, especially conceming the feudal

law practices in those regions.4 _{Nevertheless, given the fact that the charters}

1 On this type of Byzantine act, see in detail Franz Dölger and Johannes Karayannopoulos, Byz antinische Urkundenlehre. Erster Abschnitt: Die Kaiserurkunden (Munich, 1968), pp. 94-107 andn7-28.

2 For a general overview of these documents from a commercial and political perspective,

see Ralph-Johannes Lilie, Handel und Politik zwischen dem byzantinischen Reich und den italienischen Kommunen Venedig, Pisa und Genua in der Epoche der Komnenen und der Ange loi 1081-1204 (Amsterdam, 1984).

3 For the legal analysis of all preserved Byzantine imperial acts ( chrysobulls, letters, decrees,

etc.) to Venice, Pisa and Genoa in the 10th, nth and 12th centuries, see Dafni Penna, "The Byzantine Imperial Acts to Venice, Pisa and Genoa, 10th-12th Centuries. A comparative legal study." PhD diss. (University of Groningen, 2012 ).

4 For this subject, see, for example, Joshua Prawer, Crusader Institutions (Oxford, 1980 ), here

after cited as Prawer, andJ.L. La Monte, FeudalMonarcfcy in the LatinKingdom of]erusalem,

1100 to 1291 ( Cambridge, MA, 1932, Reprint New York, 1970) and many writings of D.Jacoby; for

SIMILAR PROBLEMS, SIMILAR SOLUTIONS? ₁₆₃

between the Crusader leaders and the Italians were made in the same period in which the Byzantine emperors promulgated acts in favour of the Italians, some parallels could be made in respect to the legal content of the Crusader

charters and that of the Byzantine acts to the Italians. After all, as the Ital ian merchants travelled and expanded their businesses the same legal issues arose: What happened to the goods of Italians in case of a shipwreck within the Empire and within the territories of the Crusader states? What happened to their estates when they died in Byzantium or in the Crusader states? Did Italians have the right to use their own judges and law in Constantinople and in the Crusader states?

In this contribution, I will focus on some examples of legal issues regulated in the Byzantine acts directed at Venice, Pisa and Genoa, and I will attempt to make some first comparisons with similar legal issues encountered in Crusader charters to the same three Italian cities. It would go too far here to present an exhaustive comparison of all the legal issues encountered in the Byzantine acts to the ones regulated in the Crusader charters or to present a full analysis of the formation and administration of the Crusader states. The source material used mainly derives from the previous research done for my dissertation, which covers the period up to 1204.5 _{The aim of this contribu}

tion is to raise interest in the study of Byzantine legal matters, particularly in comparison to Crusader legal matters in respect of Italian merchants, and to open channels of cooperation with Crusader historians and especially legal historians who deal with Crusader law. The writings of Angeliki E. Laiou al ready offer an inspiring shift in this direction.6 _{I will begin by discussing legal} issues referring to grants of immovable property to the Italians by the Byz antine emperors and by the Crusader leaders. In the following, I will refer to the jurisdiction of Italian judges in Constantinople and the Crusader states and then to maritime law, shipwreck and salvage provisions conceming the Italians. In the last part, conclusions will be drawn based on the discussed examples on the role of the Italians in the formation of medieval law in the Mediterranean.

example, David Jacoby, "The Venetian privileges in the Kingdom of Jerusalem," in Montjoie, Studies in Crusade History in Honour of Hans Eberhard Mayer, Benjamin Z. Kedar et al., eds. (Aldershot, 1997), pp. 155-75.

5 See Penna, "The Byzantine lmperial Acts."

6 See especially Angeliki E. Laiou, "Byzantine trade," in The Crusades from the perspective of

Byzantium and the Muslim world, Angeliki E. Laiou and Roy Parviz Mottaliedeh, eds. (Wash

ington, O.C., 2001), pp. 180-87. In this direction also La Monte, FeudalMonarcfcy, pp. 227-42,

Similar Problems, Similar Solutions: Byzantine Chrysobulls and Crusader Charters on Legal Issues Regarding the Italian Maritime Republics

University of Groningen